I didn't notice the "slew" of comments here until now. Haven't heard much more about the gravel, but it seems it all stayed in Fukushima prefecture. My wife is from western Fukushima, and it has quite a few refugees there put up in new housing, and it is almost guaranteed they used some/a lot of it for the buildings.

Kate, my thoughts are, FWIW, that there is very little radioactivity, b/c the tsunami came first and it was days before the plant reached critical and that stuff was already below the surface and heading out to sea. I don't have time to look at your link but I will try later.

Actually, though I have been uncharacteristically quiet, some things have been going on. Two separate scares.

Starting in early January (literally during New Year's) "new" fallout spikes were recorded around Fukushima City, which is pretty near the plant. They kept spiking and dropping. Nobody was sure what the cause was, and experts were spouting that it was no 2 reactor "reigniting" and that TEPCO might be covering it up. TEPCO finally insisted after it went on for too long that it was due to the dry weather allowing already deposited cesium to again get kicked up into the atmosphere. Though it is hard to accept anything TEPCO says at face value, it eventually appeared to be true. Levels continue t spike every few days and go back down again. These "spikes" are high but nothing like the days following March 11th (Japan's 9-11 in some ways). And Tokyo levels have been largely unaffected.

The second scare started Feb 9th-ish, well over a month after the gov't and TEPCO declared "cold shutdowns" at the 3 reactors (a condition I have already posted is actually technically impossible anyway), one thermometer in no. 2 reactor started slowly but steadily rising. TEPCO doubled than tripled water input to little then no effect. As the temperature started to look downright scary TEPCO released the estimate that the thermometer was broken. Did I mention no one takes TEPCO statements at face value? Anyway, two other thermometers relatively near the spiking one stayed stable and indeed were even slowly slowly dropping in temperature as they should be, and no detections of Xenon which is produced in a re-criticality, was detected (according to TEPCO!) so it is looking likely finally that the thermometer is broken. Good thing too, as it is now in the 4 hundreds.

Sometimes I think I need more of a life ala Mr. B's post - but then TEPCO and friends come along and remind me how much I like my life just like it is.

What Reboot said, lan. Also, I read yesterday that there is some real concern about new quakes in the area? The jist of the story was that new fault lines have been forged from the original quakes, and that they're really scary. I'm sorry I can't remember the link, I'm trying to get outta here, headed out for work up in Nacodoches for the next 7-10. It was a really worrisome read.

Yeah, I have heard a little about newly discovered faults. For some reason, I haven't investigated them much. Maybe too much to absorb right now. You two may know more than I do about them. I will take a look soon.

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